Regional parties meet to have a greater say in national affairs

In the beginning was the conclave. Then came the front. And now the forum. But an opposition grouping by any name follows a predictable path: beginning in rhetoric and ending in a whimper. The regional parties' meet in Hyderabad last fortnight was no different. Begun at breakfast and finished over lunch, the four-hour meeting at Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao's house did little more than give vent to stock phrases like "joint effort", "Central interference" and "national alternative".

Organised by Rama Rao, the meeting called for giving the regional parties a greater say in national affairs. Said the Telugu Desam chief: "It is the regional parties alone that can air the feelings and sentiments of the people in different parts of the country. The victories of the Akali Dal and the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) show the increasing faith in regional parties."

Karnataka Chief Minister Ramakrishna Hegde went one step further and said there was no striking distinction between a national party and a regional party and the Congress(I) was merely perpetuating the myth in its own interests.

Rama Rao, wiser by the three years he has been in politics, announced a week before the meeting that he had dropped his plans for starting a Bharat Desam. Instead, he favoured a national forum of opposition parties with coordination and joint action on issues to which they had a common approach. Participants felt that as things stood, there was hardly any coordination in the Opposition except maybe during Parliament sessions.

It was decidedly the failure of Rama Rao's experiment with opposition conclaves that prompted him to call this meeting of regional parties. But as it turned out, it was merely a change of label. Instead of the usual conclave participants like the Janata, the BJP and the Lok Dal, he had initially decided to invite the Akali Dal, the AGP, the Sikkim Sangram Parishad, the DMK, the National Conference(F) and the Samata Party of Uttar Pradesh.

The guest list was modified when Telugu Desam Parliamentary Party leader P. Upendra persuaded the party chief to invite the Janata and the Congress(S) and some of the smaller regional parties like the All-Party Hill Leaders' Conference of Meghalaya, the Manipur People's Party, the People's Conference of Mizoram, the Naga National Democratic Party, the People's Party of Arunachal Pradesh, the Rashtriya Congress of Gujarat and the Panther's Party of Jammu and Kashmir. Eventually, 13 parties attended, with the motley assemblage consisting of the Janata, the Congress(S) and the regional parties while the Sikkim Sangram Parishad stayed away.

The participants chewed the cud of the same issues, prominent among them being the promotion of a federal concept and cooperation among the states. Most of them felt that cooperation on specific issues of common interest was possible but a federation of the various regional parties was not. The "Hyderabad declaration", as the meeting chose to call its document, drafted by K.P. Unnikrishnan of the Congress(S) and Dinesh Goswami of the AGP, pledged to coordinate efforts "both inside the legislature and outside". The declaration also vowed to forge a common forum for discussion and action on various problems and issues, both national and state-level. Explained Upendra later: "The forum is not intended to be a front against anybody. Nor has it been conceived in a spirit of confrontation with the Centre. The move should be welcomed because it aims at bringing on the national scene, parties working in different parts of the country."

The meeting was too short to discuss modalities like the shape and scope of the forum. At best, it was merely an idea at that stage. But it promptly drew flak from the communist parties with the CPI running it down as a "hoax" and the CPI(M) accusing the Telugu Desam of making moves "without knowing the history of the national parties".

This beginning - if it can be called one - is not a new one. While earlier the cementing force of the Oppostion was their aversion to Mrs Gandhi, the common denominator now is the supremacy and interference of the Centre. Rama Rao himself virtually admitted this when he complained of opposition-run states having to "beg even for small grants before the Delhi durbar".

But as The Times of India pointed out in an editorial referring to Rama Rao's plaint: "Strong, heady stuff. But Opposition unity has to be built on more enduring foundations than resentment and wishful thinking. The opposition record so far does not inspire much confidence that it will."

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